White Lines & Red Lights
by RainingMonday
Summary: When Addison met Mark ... What if Addison knew Mark before Derek? AU exploration of Mark and Addison in college as their initial competition and disdain give way to a chain of events they can't control and disillusionment they're unsure how to face.


.:.:. **White Lines & Red Lights** .:.:.

**Maybe I should be sick more often so I can stay home and write fanfics :). What can I say? I'm insanely excited about the crossover and somehow convinced that if I write enough Maddison, Shonda will see the light. Anyway, song is by Between The Trees. Enjoy :)**

* * *

"Hey, Montgomery!" you yell, pushing some scrawny kid aside to catch up with the redhead who is power walking away, eyes trained on the organic chemistry book that accompanies her everywhere in whatever Coach accessory matches that day. "What'd you get on that test?"

"A ninety-nine, but don't pretend you don't already know. You're just asking me so you can rub it in, Sloan," she says primly, still not looking at you, and you roll your eyes in annoyance. The only reason you bother with her, nerd that she is, is because she's nearly as smart as you and twice as fun to tease.

"Rub what in? We both got ninety-nine percent," you point out with a smirk, indicating list of results your professor has pinned to the bulletin board.

"Yes, but your name is listed first even though mine comes first alphabetically," she states, wrinkling her nose, and you laugh at how much it bugs her. Of course, she takes it that you're laughing _at _her, instead of potentially with her, and she shoves into you as she walks away.

"I'm always on top!" you shout after with your patented arrogance. You really don't like her. She annoys the hell out of you. Always with her nose buried in a book, you swear she dresses in designer clothes because that's all she has. She sounds like a textbook when answering questions and has said many an innocent comment to your girlfriend of the day about your girlfriend of the day before. She calls you a womanizing bastard at every opportunity, and the words fall from her lips like the blight on society she thinks you are.

"Typical!" she calls back before being swamped by a pack of her friends, intent on comparing notes about science and boys alike. You hang back, even though _your _friends are determined to get beers to either celebrate or mourn scores after teasing Phyllis Hoffman about her perm and braces and lack of figure.

And you don't exactly _hide _behind the tree. You just stand behind it to ensure she can't see you.

"So, Addie, what's up with you and Mark Sloan?" one of Addison's friends, Kimberly, you think, or maybe Kelly, she wasn't that good in the sack anyway, asks.

"What about Mark?" another girl with shiny brunette hair and a nice ass asks, and they all lapse into giggles, all except Addison, who looks like she swallowed a lemon.

"Absolutely nothing. We were simply comparing test results," she says, her voice as frosty as the Monet lily sky of New York after the first snow.

"Right, comparing notes. _Everyone _compares notes with Mark Sloan, and then compares notes about him afterward," another girl whose name might be Lori laughs.

"I would never sleep with Mark Sloan," Addison counters. "He's a cocky bastard who treats women like disposable toothbrushes. Believe me, he's the last man I'd _ever _have sex with, much less fall for."

"God, Addie, you're such a cynic. Haven't you ever heard of fun?"

"I'm not here to have fun. I'm here to get into the best med school I can," she states, nose in the air, and you roll your eyes, but figure you're well rid of her. There're plenty of other girls at this school, ones who require little more than a flash of your famous smirk and a few well chosen words to get them in your bed. Girls who want nothing more than the evanescent heat and short-lived pleasure of a one night stand.

Still, it bothers you a bit. You could _so _get her to sleep with you, if you really tried.

(*)

Despite your valiant efforts to write Addison Montgomery off as an inhuman bitch, you still wonder, while thrusting with reckless abandon inside of the blonde of the night, what it would feel like to touch crimson curls instead of bleach blonde, or look into blue eyes the color of the Riviera instead of flat brown or pale seawater.

You usually try to stop yourself before you get to that point. After all, the only reason you want her is because you can't have her.

Her back is perfectly erect as she jots down what you're sure is a perfect transcription of the lecture your professor is eagerly spitting out at all of you (literally spitting, the kids in the front keep flinching.) You're not really paying attention. You were born with an intrinsic skill to score an effortless A on every test regardless of whether or not you studied.

"Why will SN1 and E1 only work for secondary or tertiary α –carbons?" The professor (you've forgotten his name, if you ever knew it in the first place) questions his students in his usual dry monotone. As is customary, Addison's hand hits the air before anyone else's, but he ignores her and calls on you instead.

"Mr. Sloan?"

Addison whirls around and the angry glare she fixes on you makes this more than worth it. "Both mechanisms require a stable carbocation intermediate," you answer confidently.

"Precisely. Now, what do carbocations rearrange to form, and what effect does this have on the potential products?"

Addison thrusts her hand up immediately, and you're right on her tail, but this time he forgoes both of you for a mousy student sitting in the second row. Addison looks disappointed, while you pull out your phone under your desk and text your friend Derek to complain about 'the annoying redhead' in your organic chemistry class. He's thinking about transferring, he tells you.

You can feel the hared being emitted by Addison like the radiation you studied in regular chemistry all throughout class.

You _happen _to come across her later in the library, glasses perched on the end of her nose, staring at a textbook intently. You wrinkle your nose in distaste, because it's not that she's unattractive, it's just that her personality is – you don't mix well, according to your contrasting polarities, just like oil and water. Later, however, you'll discover that you should have taken into account that opposites attract.

"Is there something you want? Besides my boobs in your face, I mean." You frown at the redhead's statement, as you were several shelves away and casually browsing the history section, WWI to be specific.

"So browsing in the library is a crime these days, Montgomery?"

"No, but since the moral complexities of war would probably confound someone like you," she answers, still without looking up, "I don't know what you're doing over there."

"Seriously," you start, taking the seat across from her, and her eyes flicker up to roam over the hard muscles under your heather grey t-shirt before you catch her staring and a blush the color of flowers in full bloom creeps over her cheeks. "Why do you hate me?"

"I don't," she says, flipping a page, her perfectly straight white teeth digging into her lower lip. You resist a wild, foreign urge to tuck a stray red curl behind her ear. "I just think you're a manwhore who has little respect for females in general."

"I have respect for girls!"

"When, when they're giving you head?"

"You know what I think your problem is?" You finally have her full attention, and she raises one flawlessly curved strawberry eyebrow, as if daring you to enlighten her. "You're attracted to me, but I'm not a freaking prince charming so you'd never give me a chance."

Heat rises in her face, not from embarrassment but from anger this time, and her jewel blue eyes are sharper than glass, you swear she's trying to kill you with that look alone. "I wouldn't sleep with you if we were the last two people on this earth!" she hisses.

"Now, that's not evolutionarily efficient. If, by natural selection, we were the last two people on the earth, you'd have no choice but to procreate with me, not only to preserve our race, but because you might get horny after a while."

"You're incorrigible," she mutters, placing the textbook back in front of her face and studiously ignoring you.

"You just want to be a DNA helicase so you can unzip my genes."

(*)

You stay out of Addison's way after that, because if you hang out with her too much, or at all, she might rub off on you. Some days you're unsure whether you want to break her in half like a toothpick or shove her into a wall and fuck her so hard she forgets all the facts she keeps on alphabetical notecards in her purse.

Sometimes you think you turned out the way you did because you have a low capacity for empathy and love, on account of your parents spending their time at work or at the country club. Still, when you see Addison sitting alone, arms wrapped tight around her chest, her spine curved with stress, you walk over against your will. There's something heartbreakingly beautiful about her perched beneath that tree, its branches at almost protective angles around her.

You feel like an idiot when you go over and discover, upon sinking onto the damp cedar of the bench beside her, that she's crying. Her shoulders are positively shaking with sobs and you're uncertain how she can even draw breath until she tells you in a hoarse, cracked voice to, "Go away."

"Uh, well, I was just going to ask if maybe you wanted to study together. Professor … uh … what's his face, well, anyway, he hinted that this is going to be a pretty hard test, so …"

"Why the hell would you want to study with me?" she chokes. "You're smarter, according to you, and you make fun of girls like me."

"I do not."

"Do too."

"Like who?"

"Phyllis Hoffman," she supplies immediately.

"I don't tease Phyllis," you defend." My friends do."

"You don't tell them not to," she whispers, eyes on her entwined hands, and for the first time in your life, you feel guilty because even if you've never so much as spoken to Phyllis you put girls like her through hell in high school.

"You're right, I don't," you say, and next time you do, just for her, even though they beat you down and call you a pussy. "But Addison? You're nothing like Phyllis."

She shifts so the book beside her is balanced between your leg and hers, and for the first time you truly notice how the creamy white of her leg is folded delicately under her and fantasies are obscured by the black skirt that reaches mid-thigh. You try to focus on Enantiomers and Diastereomers but each time she sniffs, her nose still red, your heart contracts with sympathy.

"Addison," you say finally, because you aren't getting anywhere and you doubt she's taken in a single word on the page. "What happened? Why were you crying?" You probably could have been more diplomatic but honesty is your specialty, not sentimental crap.

Another sob rips through her and you're surprised to find yourself gripping her shoulders gently and pulling her against your chest. How your fingers end up in her hair you cannot imagine, nor can you fathom that she smells like the perfect combination of cinnamon, musk, and a flower you can't identify.

You wait with uncharacteristic patience until she calms down enough to whisper, "Pr-Professor Carwin asked … he asked me to stay af-fter class, so I did, and I thought he was going to talk about the English t-test – I thought I'd failed or something … b-but then he said I was really smart and … and he put his hand on my knee and, and …"

You exhale sharply. "He didn't …"

"No … no, I ran out and came here. I," her voice cracks, "why do … what did I …"

"You didn't do anything, Addison. Some people are just sleazy bastards," you assure her. "If he ever touches you again, I swear to God I'll kill him."

"Thanks, Mark," she says into the wet spot she made on your shirt. "Maybe you're not so bad after all." Her voice is barely a mutter, and you can't decipher whether it's from embarrassment or exhaustion. But you allow her to pull back and adjust her cream blouse and pearl necklace and attempt to divest her face of the black streaks of mascara.

"You want to study?" you offer, suddenly unsure how this is supposed to play out.

"No. Not now," she amends. "Another time?"

"Sure. Want me to walk you back?"

Addison blushes again, hands fastened unsurely around her textbook as she studies you from underneath pearly black eyelashes. Finally she nods and allows you to walk beside her, hand on the small of her back, unsure why your heart feels about to burst.

(*)

Studying becomes a regular habit for the two of you, you're both smart and you push each other and frustrate each other but as you take your next test you realize that you know the information almost as well as you know the structure of her delicate cheekbones, the mischief and delight sprinkled equally across her face when she laughs, and the glimpse of forever when your eyes meet.

There are no rules that hold true for every first impression, but you can confidently say that all you see now is the way she uses cookie cutters on the bread she feeds to birds so it looks nice, even though she thinks they smell terrible. You can see her educational fervor is inspired not by money or fame or her family's pressure, but instead from an inherent instinct to save and nurture and protect.

So when you reach the very question about carbocations you'd answered that day in class, you locate the right answer and then fill in the bubble one below it. This way, you figure, you'll be able to ask her out either way – as a celebration if she beats you, or a continuing competition if you tie.

She gets a hundred percent and celebrates by getting you both uproariously drunk and then forcing you to flirt with everyone from Phyllis Hoffman to an eighty-year-old woman to a guy drinking a cosmopolitan. And as you're hitting on these random strangers, as per Addison's requests because you lost a bet about test scores you weren't aware you'd made, you realize that she's your friend but you wish she could be all the things you never dreamed you'd want.

(*)

"How does this one sound?" you grunt from your position on the floor of your small apartment, wearing only a pair of fleece pajama pants, and Addison rolls over on your bed to look at you, clad in a pair of your boxers and a t-shirt (you try to ignore what this does to you.)

"_I _am trying to study, Mark Sloan. Just because you have some freaky ability to skip that part and still pass all your classes doesn't mean I want to hear all your sleazy pick up lines," she sniffs, but the way she sucks her soft pink lips together, like she's trying not to grin, inspires you to continue.

"I want to be a derivative so I can lie tangent to your curves," you say in a sultry voice, your slate eyes burning into hers, and a crooked smile, the one that guarantees you have a woman in your bed whenever you please, in place.

Instead of laughing and smacking you, like she usually does, her eyes darken to an ocean tropic shade of lust as her lips pop open softly. You always felt an underlying attraction to her, even when you loathed the very idea, but you didn't know she felt the same.

"Oh, um," she says finally. "Sorry, I … I just, uh, that's a good one. You know, I should probably …"

"Addison," you groan softly. "Shut up."

You're tired of resisting, of pretending, of not feeling, so you surrender utterly and press your lips to hers firmly but softly. She lets forth a small "oh" of surprise into your mouth as you push her lips open with your tongue and sweep her mouth. She tastes sweet, like peaches, maybe, and something else completely unidentifiable. You don't care. You've never cared less.

She winds her arms around your neck and kisses you back with fervor, kneeling in front of you with her scarlet hair tickling your bare shoulders. You press her back against the bed, moving your lips to the cream curve of her neck, and begin to suck softly. She sighs and you cup her breasts gently, only to discover she isn't wearing a bra, and before you know it you're more than halfway hard.

"I haven't … exactly … done this … a lot," she gasps between kisses and you smile and kiss her softly, reassuring her as you tug the Yankees t-shirt over her head. She's beautiful in your arms, all red lips and soft skin, and, to your surprise, a bird tattoo on her upper back.

Your hand dances up the boxers that technically belong to you (you admit they just might look better on her) and she gasps at the first contact with her amethyst cream panties. Her hands fumble with your pajama pants, and she stares a little when she gets them around your ankles, whether because this is a new sight for her or you're bigger than she's used to you're not certain. Either way you tug down her panties with unparalleled fervor until she's naked before you, an unknowing goddess on your navy sheets.

You trail fingers down her thigh and suddenly she's shaking like mad when your length accidently touches her stomach. "Addie?" you whisper, seeking to confirm your sudden suspicion. "Addison, when you say you haven't done this a lot …"

"I haven't … ever," she admits in a voice of the most fragile glass.

"You're a virgin?" you ask, the incredulity leaking out through your open lips. Her eyes feel with tears and she struggles to push you off but you restrain her gently and stare with eyes the color of melting icicles until she looks at you.

"I'm not making fun of you, Addison. I'm just surprised because … you seemed, I don't know, experienced or confident or something."

"In high school, Skippy Gold," she mumbles, her lip white under the pressure of her teeth, "well, he took me to a hotel after prom, and he tried to … you know. It was just what all the guys expected so I, uh, let him take my dress off, but then I just … couldn't."

"We don't have to …" you offer, despite the fact that your arousal is getting almost painful at this point and you've got a girl under you, completely naked. This isn't the way your trysts usually go but you're willing to forsake the plan for Addison.

"No," she murmurs, her eyes, the color of the lake behind Derek's house in the summer, a uncultivated mix of blue and green, meeting yours again. "I want to."

You meet her lips again, slower, this time, with a gentleness that would have made an earlier version of you scoff. She utters a small gasp as you simultaneously cup her breasts and part her rose petal lips once again with your tongue. You run your thumbs over the hard rosy peaks of her nipples and she moans so invitingly that you do it again, and again, and again until you feel her nails puncture your back.

You smirk as you move down her body, your lips trailing over her smooth stomach and eliciting shivers until you move between her thighs and discover, to your delight, that she's a natural redhead. She emits breathy little whimpers as you kiss the insides of her thighs, and you're unsure whether she's even breathing properly anymore but the death grip on the short, fine golden threads of your hair seems encouragement enough to continue.

She gasps when you barely touch her with the tip of your tongue, and already she's so wet your lips are slick with her fluids. You tease her with fingers and tongue for a few minutes until she reaches the edge of ecstasy, and you pull back to look in her eyes. "You ready?" you whisper, and she nods and pushes her hips upward, chest heaving with desire.

You ease in slowly and whether the noises she makes are rendered of pleasure or pain you're unsure, probably a little of both, and you struggle to think as you begin to move inside her because this is better than fucking, almost too damn good to be real.

She doesn't take long to explode and you follow amongst her moans and pleads and "Oh God, Mark, oh God!" You both lie sated, wrapped in sheets made of sapphire strains, and she falls asleep with her head on your arm. It's well past two when the creak of the front door awakens you and you remember Derek is transferring this weekend, and staying with you, either indefinitely or until he finds a place of his own.

(*)

You awaken around six and squint as you watch the inky sky turn lilac as you carefully tuck the sheets around Addison and tiptoe from your room, pulling on a pair of jeans as you go. Derek is snoring on your couch, his watch emitting a faint glow from its position over his eyes. You roll your eyes and hope Addison doesn't wake until you get back because Derek's hair products make him look like a psycho when he wakes up.

Two hours later, you're about to combust with frustration as you run up your apartment stairs and nearly trip, swearing as your stub your toe. There was an accident on the way to your favorite breakfast place and then the lady in front of you ordered enough food to feed a third world country and _then _you got stopped by an elderly woman who was convinced you stole her wallet.

Now it's after eight and the breakfast in the paper bags clutched in your right hand is rapidly cooling as you fumble for your keys and unlock the door. But the sight before you makes you freeze.

Addison has her head on Derek's shoulder and he's stroking her hair softly. There must be an explanation, you reason, as the air becomes hard to breathe.

"I'm sorry," Derek is saying softly. "I'm … he, well, Mark does this a lot."

"Does what?" Addison asks in a small voice.

"I heard him leave at six," Derek admits, as if this is difficult for him. "I don't know how to say this nicely, but Mark oftentimes has one night stands and then leaves before the girls wake up so they think it's to avoid awkwardness, but really he's … he's moving on, if you know what I mean. Right now. Literally."

Addison sniffs, and you want to walk in that room and gather her long limbs up and squeeze her so hard she'll be molded to you and you'll never have to let go. But before you can take more than five steps, Derek speaks again.

"So do you happen to be the annoying redhead Mark's been texting me about all this time … uh…" Derek trails off, presumably because Addison's eyes have swelled with excess liquid. You want to smack your head against the wall; yes, you texted those things to Derek, but that was months ago. You have to wonder whether he's doing this on purpose.

"Is that what he calls me?" she chokes.

"No … he just … a few months ago …" Derek attempts halfheartedly to amend.

"I'm such an idiot. I thought I was different somehow, but I'm just another notch in his bedpost. All of it was to get me to sleep with him," Addison says bitterly, and the hatred in her voice, meant only for you, is much more painful than it was when she initially disdained you because at least then you felt the same way. Now her words are like little shards of broken glass wedged in impossible places in your heart.

"You're not an idiot," Derek soothes, and you roll your eyes, because any monkey could have said that.

"You're good at this," Addison tells him softly.

"I comfort the girls after Mark's done, I've done it since high school," he admits ruefully, and you want to smack him, break his nose and ruin that perfect hair he probably got up early to style. But … but Derek won't leave her, Derek won't hurt her, and if she wants him, who are you to get in her way? So instead you creep quietly out, praying they won't hear you, and throw the breakfast you picked up in the dumpster.

Then you sit against the bricks, hoping the tiny, iridescent rain drops will wash away the smell of her skin on you as well as the things you tried to resist feeling.

(*)

"I always knew," she says, her long, graceful legs, covered in ivory tights, shifting beneath her as she looks into your eyes in the middle of your and Lexie's apartment. She's just as beautiful, even all these years later, but now she's even more breakable, like china that's been packed away for years and gathered cracks. The sadness seeps through the gaps.

"Knew what?"

"That you a ninety-nine on that test on purpose, so you could ask me out," she whispers.

"How do you know that," you ask gruffly, staring at a stain in the carpet, because you can't look at her right now. You never wanted anything as much as you wanted her and you figure God chose her to punish you for all your wrongdoings, putting her atop a ladder you could never climb to her satisfaction.

"I asked Professor Garby if I could take a look at my test, because I told him I though I'd forgotten a step in one of the reactions. Your test was on top of mine, and I just …"

"It's okay. You don't need to explain. You liked to rub screw ups in my face even then …"

"I'm sorry, Mark. Really, truly sorry. I wish …"

"Don't wish," you warn her, and she shuts her mouth, the unspoken fantasy left on her lips. "I wasn't screwing another girl that morning," you feel compelled to inform her. "I was out getting breakfast."

It is almost satisfying how her eyes fill with tears, but heart rendering at the same time, and you feel relief juxtaposed with longing as she kisses you, hard, and you bite her lip so hard you draw blood. Your clothes fall off in a waterfall of missed opportunity, and as she lies beneath you on your couch, you finally understand the definition of forever.

"I hope you understand I'm not letting you go this time," she whispers in-between kisses, her beautiful body splayed out under yours, her head resting on the sleeve of hear ruby pea coat.

"You can choose the city," you offer, "but I get to pick the house and the dog and the tractor and how many kids we have." She is about to protest, as bossy as ever, but you twist your fingers just right and all that escapes is a conceding moan.

"Mark?" Lexie's voice calls, you can hear her keys on the granite counter and flats on the tile. "I brought breakfast!"

* * *

**As you can see, I'm hoping for Maddison to dominate the crossover, because let's face it, they need each other. Get with the picture Shonda. Right. Anyway. Reviews, por favor :D?**


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